I think my favorite of the essays was Dr. Wendy Schultz’ – the 4 stages of libraries. In a nutshell it stressed that libraries need to change and evolve. Librarians come out from behind the desk and patrons are librarians too – cataloging and classifying. Libraries are becoming co-operative environments.
At one of the DOL workshops with Pat Wagner on leadership, she talked about the different levels of responsibility in the library and compared them to birds – the library director is the hawk – flying high taking in lots of landscape at one time – looking ahead to the future. The clerical duties are like the birds that peck away at the bottom of the bird feeder – they never stray very far and have very little variety. The middle bird would be one who dwells at the edge of the woods, taking forays across the field and then seeking shelter in the woods – sort of the middle managers (of people and information). (Okay – I made that middle bird up. I don’t remember what Pat really said about the middle bird – I must have gotten up to go to the restroom or was lost in a daydream about being a hawk soaring high in the sky on a summer afternoon, spying a juicy mouse down in the field below, swooping in and grabbing it in my sharp and gleaming talons, squeezing and squeezing until the poor little mouse stopped struggling against my grasp……oh sorry I got carried away again)
ANYWAY – All of our libraries can fit into the same sort of metaphor – the hawks are the large libraries in urban areas that have more patrons and more patrons are tech savvy. They can lead the way trying new things, can afford to take more risks. They can blaze the trails. The other end is the small one person library, usually in rural or very rural areas, perhaps struggling just to stay open. If there is no cell service they don’t really need to have a catalog with an app for the cell phone (yet). It’s not that tech developments won’t ever get there, but they are at the back of the line. (And nationwide I think Vermont is closer to the back of the line than most) Then there are those in the middle who can take some risk and follow in the lead taken by others.
Co-operation is essential in this new environment, no one can succeed in an information vacuum (although I think some trustees think their libraries should). I think the GMLC is a great example of co-operation and giving smaller libraries the chance to move up the ladder of technological advancement than they could have alone. Another way libraries need to co-operate is by sharing with each other and having conversations across the state, whether by wiki, or at the conference, or at regional meetings. I have found meeting with the Franklin County librarian as informative and educational as the classes from the DOL. Libraries are people and we are just drawing the circle of that definition to include more and more. I don’t think libraries will ever live exclusively in the cloud.
